1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of data and content-based networks. More specifically, the present invention relates in one exemplary aspect to methods and apparatus for delivering programming content along with alternate targeted advertisements (including promotions and other similar types of content) via a cable television network.
2. Description of Related Technology
In cable television networks, advertisements are usually statically interspersed within a given broadcasted program. In this manner, every CPE in a local service area which is currently tuned to the same program channel will receive the same advertisements at approximately the same time and in the same order.
In content-based networks, advertisements (including without limitation promotions, commercials, and short segments) that are viewed by subscribers can be controlled in several ways. Generally, two categories or subdivisions of these techniques exist: (i) national- or high-level insertion, and (ii) local- or low-level insertion.
Under national level insertion, national networks (such as NBC, ABC, etc.) are responsible for determining the advertisements or promotions that are resident in a given program stream. The pre-configured stream is delivered to the network operator (e.g., MSO), and the MSO merely then delivers the stream (content and advertisements) to the relevant subscribers over their network.
Under local-level insertion, the MSO (and even broadcast affiliates) can insert locally-generated advertisements or commercials and other such segments into remotely distributed regional programs before they are delivered to the network subscribers.
Advertisement time is typically priced based upon an associated program's popularity (and hence its time slot). Such prices are commonly based on Nielsen Television Ratings, which are ratings determined by measuring of the number of unique viewers or households tuned to a television program at any one particular time.
The Nielsen system has also recently been expanded from only program content to advertising (i.e., Nielsen ratings may be provided for advertisements themselves).
Nielsen Television Ratings are gathered in one of two ways. One method involves asking viewers of various demographics to keep a written record of the television shows they watch throughout the day and evening. Another method involves using “Set Meters,” which are small devices connected to televisions in selected homes. These devices electronically gather the viewing habits of the home and transmit the information nightly to Nielsen over a connected phone line.
There are several disadvantages with employing a Nielsen-like approach to pricing statically interspersed cable advertisements. The first is that the sample of viewers selected may not be fairly representative of the population of cable viewers as a whole. For example, in a cable network comprising four million cable viewers, a sample of any 100,000 viewers may exhibit different average viewing habits than the averages associated with the other 3,900,000 cable viewers who are not in the sample.
A second disadvantage is that static delivery makes it difficult to perfectly target an audience known to be in the market. For example, suppose that the ideal target for a sports car advertisement is the set of all consumers who like and would be interested in buying sports cars. If all that is known from Nielsen data is that 10% of the sample group has watched the auto-racing channel for over three hours in the last month, this may not perfectly correlate with set of consumers who like sports cars. This may be the case, for example, if there are some consumers who are in the market for sports cars but who never watch the auto racing channel, or if there are some viewers of the auto racing channel who have no interest in buying or owning sports cars. As such, patterns based on viewership data often imprecisely identify the desired audience.
The aforementioned prior art “Nielsen” approach is also program-specific, and this is a problem from several aspects. First, the efficacy of the advertising is tied to the accuracy of the demographic model for that particular program; i.e., that most 18-30 year old females in fact do actually watch American Idol. As a limiting case, if the demographic model used had 0% correlation with actual behavior, then advertising used based on that demographic model would have a correspondingly low (or no) effect on the target demographic (e.g., 18-30 year old females), since none of them would be watching American Idol when the advertising was broadcast. Stated simply, the prior art program-coupled approach is only as good as the underlying demographic correlation model.
Also, the aforementioned demographic model is often limited to one particular program. Hence, the 18-30 year old females discussed above may tune in dutifully to American Idol each broadcast (e.g., Monday at 8:00 pm), but may not have any interest in watching the program immediately preceding or following American Idol, and hence may tune away (or delay tuning to that channel until the start of American Idol). The demographic model for that particular program accordingly may have little or no correlation to periods (programs) before or after it, and thus a new demographic model (which may cater to a heterogeneous demographic from the first, e.g., 40-65 year-old males) would be needed. This has the effect of, inter alia, artificially segmenting or imposing boundaries on the continuity of advertising or promotions; i.e., a given “theme” or demographic cannot be reliably targeted significantly beyond the program boundaries unless the same demographic or theme continues in the programming itself. The network operator, network, or other entity must effectively tailor advertisements/promotions on a per-program basis in some cases if their advertising/promotion is to have maximum efficacy.
A number of other different approaches have been described in the prior art which attempt to facilitate effective targeted advertising or promotional content delivery. For example, United States Patent Application Publication No. 20070113243 to Brey published May 17, 2007 entitled “TARGETED ADVERTISING SYSTEM AND METHOD”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a targeted advertising system comprising an interface unit configured to receive broadcast transmissions, a primary broadcast stream for broadcast programming, a secondary broadcast stream for targeted advertising content, and a storage device for storing the targeted advertising content. The method comprises presenting a targeted advertising content to a user including receiving a primary broadcast stream, receiving a secondary broadcast stream, storing a portion of the secondary broadcast stream in a storage device, and presenting a targeted advertising stream to the user, which may be selected based on a user parameter.
United States Patent Application Publication No. 20070089127 to Flickinger et al. published Apr. 19, 2007 entitled “ADVERTISEMENT FILTERING AND STORAGE FOR TARGETED ADVERTISEMENT SYSTEMS”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses an advertisement storage and filtering system for selectively identifying targeted advertisements to be stored in the memory of the STB. This storing of the selected advertisements can be accomplished in a number of ways. In one embodiment, the advertisements, in real-time and as they are received at the STB, are processed by the STB and only those advertisements with the appropriate characteristics are stored on the hard drive. This may require some buffering of the advertisements in the STB memory as the STB processes and determines whether or not to store the advertisement. The information required to determine whether or not to store the advertisement could also be sent in advance, e.g., as a data service in an advertisement channel. Alternatively, the STB may store incoming advertisements in a memory temporarily and subsequently determine whether or not to retain the stored advertisements.
United States Patent Application Publication No. 20060277569 to Smith published Dec. 7, 2006 entitled “DVR-BASED TARGETED ADVERTISING”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a system for DVR-based targeted advertising. In an embodiment, a targeted advertisement system includes a DVR, an advertisement data store, and an advertisement manager. The DVR records media content, maintains the recorded media content for on-demand viewing, and provides the recorded media content for viewing when requested. The advertisement manager designates advertisement region(s) in the recorded media content as the media content is being recorded, where an advertisement region includes a first boundary and a second boundary to designate the advertisement region in the media content. The advertisement manager monitors a first data stream of the recorded media content when it is rendered for viewing to detect that a playback position of the first data stream has crossed an advertisement region boundary, and to initiate that an advertisement obtained from the advertisement data store be provided as a second data stream to render the advertisement for viewing.
United States Patent Application Publication No. 20060253864 to Easty published Nov. 9, 2006 entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR HOUSEHOLD TARGETED ADVERTISING”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a targeted television advertisement system comprising a customer premises equipment at a household and coupled to a television set, the customer premise equipment, which comprises a server operable to access a media storage device and demand-pull advertising elementary streams customized for a viewer of the household, and a splicer operable to receive a program elementary streams and splice the demand-pulled advertising elementary streams into the program elementary streams.
United States Patent Application Publication No. 20060253328 to Kohli et al. published Nov. 9, 2006 entitled “TARGETED ADVERTISING USING VERIFIABLE INFORMATION”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a system and a method to match advertisement requests with campaigns using targeting attributes, and campaigns are selected for fulfillment of the advertisement request according to a priority algorithm. The targeting uses end user information that is verifiable, and which the user has granted permission to use, improving the granularity and accuracy of the targeting data. The algorithm includes load balancing and campaign state evaluation on a per campaign, per user basis. The algorithm enables control over the frequency and number of exposures for a campaign, optimizing the advertising both from the perspective of the user and the advertiser.
United States Patent Application Publication No. 200602483555 to Eldering published Nov. 2, 2006 entitled “TARGETED ADVERTISING THROUGH ELECTRONIC PROGRAM GUIDE”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a mechanism for matching Electronic Program Guide (EPG) advertisements to subscribers or groups of subscribers and delivering those advertisements within the EPG. The subscribers are initially characterized in different groups by using commercially available data, such as demographic data. Furthermore, the groups of subscribers may be formed according to their characteristics. These characteristics may be derived from, but are not limited to, demographic data, geographic information or individual subscriber selection data. Subsequent to the formation of the groups, suitable advertisements to be placed in the EPG avails are selected, based on the matching of the advertisement characteristics to the characteristics of the groups, wherein the EPG avails are the advertising opportunities available within the EPG. Different versions of the EPG having targeted advertisements may be created, and the different versions may be placed on a download server for transmission over an access system to the subscriber. At the subscriber end, the different versions of the EPG may be received and the subscriber end, being assigned to a particular group, may receive the EPG which corresponds to that group. The subscriber end generally comprises a suitable subscriber interface, such as, a set-top box (STB) or a cable-ready television having a unique identification.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,228,555 to Schlack issued Jun. 5, 2007 entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DELIVERING TARGETED ADVERTISEMENTS USING MULTIPLE PRESENTATION STREAMS”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a system and method for delivering channels of presentation streams carrying targeted advertisements in a television service network environment. The system includes a generator for generating a set of presentation streams for each of programming channels, each of the presentation streams in each set having same programming data but different advertisements directed to advertiser-specific market segments of different advertisers. A plurality of local routing stations receives the generated sets of presentation streams. At least one local routing station processes the sets of presentation streams and selectively switches between the presentation streams in each set to output one presentation stream for a programming channel. As a result, a presentation stream carrying the most appropriate advertisement is provided to a viewer at any given time for at least one programming channel.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,738,978 to Hendricks, et al. issued May 18, 2004, entitled “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR TARGETED ADVERTISEMENT”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a network controller for use with a digital cable headend capable of monitoring and controlling set top terminals in a television program delivery system. The invention relates to methods and apparatus for a network controller that manages a configuration of set top terminals in a program delivery system. The invention is particularly useful in program delivery systems with hundreds of channels of programming, a menu driven program selection system, and a program control information signal that carries data and identifies available program choices. Specifically, the invention modifies a program control information signal at the cable headend before the modified signal is transmitted to each set top terminal. This signal is used with polling methods to receive upstream data from the set top terminals. The invention initiates such upstream data retrieval, gathers all data received and compiles viewer demographics information and programs watched information. The invention processes this data and information to generate packages of advertisements, as well as account and billing reports, targeted towards each set top terminal. The invention uses upstream data reception hardware, databases and processing hardware and software to accomplish these functions.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,718,551 to Swix, et al. issued Apr. 6, 2004 entitled “METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PROVIDING TARGETED ADVERTISEMENTS”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a method and system for providing targeted advertisements over a networked media delivery system, especially interactive television networks, the system comprising tracking and storing viewer selections, analyzing the selections, and delivering targeted advertisements that appeal to the particular subscriber making the selections. The system includes a merge processor, a file server, a profile processor, and a broadcast server contained in a head end in communication with a plurality of set-top boxes through a distribution network. Based on a subscriber's viewing habits and account information, the invention delivers different, customized advertisements to different viewers watching the same program or channel. The advertisements are delivered as either still frame bit maps or as video streams advertisement insertion in a playlist or a broadcast media program.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,463,585 to Hendricks, et al. issued Oct. 8, 2002 entitled “TARGETED ADVERTISEMENT USING TELEVISION DELIVERY SYSTEMS”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a multiple channel architecture designed to allow targeted advertising directed to television terminals connected to an operations center or a cable headend. Program channels carry television programs. During commercial breaks in the television programs, advertisements, which are also broadcast on the program channel, are displayed. However, additional feeder channels carry alternate advertising that may be better suited for certain viewing audiences. The operations center or the cable headend generate a group assignment plan that assigns the television terminals to groups, based on factors such as area of dominant influence and household income. A switching plan is then generated that instructs the television terminals to remain with the program channel or to switch to one of the alternate feeder channels during the program breaks. The television terminals record which channels were viewed during the program breaks, and report this information to the cable headends and the operations center. The reported information is used to generate billing for commercial advertisers, and to analyze viewer watching habits. The invention uses upstream data reception hardware, databases and processing hardware and software to accomplish these functions.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,002,393 also issued to Hite, et al. Dec. 14, 1999, entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DELIVERING TARGETED ADVERTISEMENTS TO CONSUMERS USING DIRECT COMMANDS”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a system and method for targeting TV advertisements to individual consumers by delivering a plurality of advertisements to a display site. A command signal is sent to the display site commanding the display of a selected advertisement suited for the individual consumer. In another embodiment, a predetermined advertisement is delivered upon command from a control center to a viewing site intended for the particular consumer.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,774,170 to Hite, et al. issued Jun. 30, 1998 entitled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DELIVERING TARGETED ADVERTISEMENTS TO CONSUMERS”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses advertising by targeting, delivering and displaying electronic advertising messages (commercials) within specified programming in one or more pre-determined households (or on specific display devices) while simultaneously preventing a commercial from being displayed in other households or on other displays for which it is not intended. Commercials are delivered to specified homes or displays via either over-the-air or wired delivery systems.
Digital Video Recording and Playback
Numerous types of modern electronic devices are adapted to receive and record broadcast or on-demand content delivered over cable or satellite networks. Such devices include, e.g., personal video recorders (PVR's), digital video recorders (DVR's), TiVo's™, etc. In addition to the ability of these devices to store content, such devices are also adapted to enable a user to perform so-called “trick mode” functions including without limitation pausing and rewinding “live” or real-time TV, and fast-forwarding, pausing, and rewinding programs previously recorded to the devices' hard drive or flash memory.
With the advent of such video recording and “trick mode” technology, a viewer may fast-forward through any portion of a previously recorded program (e.g., movie, sporting event, etc.). Thus, viewers are able to avoid viewing commercial advertising altogether. However, when doing so, a viewer must in effect make an educated guess (using any available visual cues) at when a commercial has ended and the program has started again. This leads to the viewer spending time fast-forwarding, rewinding and fast-forwarding again to find the exact moment when the recorded content begins.
Further, although permitting viewers to skip commercials permits the viewer no significant interruption of the program they are viewing (thereby ostensibly enhancing subscriber satisfaction), it also deprives the network operator of a valuable source of advertisement-based revenue, since the number of “impressions” of network subscribers for a given advertisement or promotion is significantly reduced. Stated differently, the easier it is for a subscriber to bypass an advertisement, generally the less demographic penetration or effect that advertisement will have.
Consequently, a number of approaches have been developed in the prior art which attempt to discourage viewers from being able to completely skip advertisements. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,909,837 to Unger, issued Jun. 21, 2005 and entitled “METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PROVIDING ALTERNATIVE, LESS-INTRUSIVE ADVERTISING THAT APPEARS DURING FAST FORWARD PLAYBACK OF A RECORDED VIDEO PROGRAM”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a digital video recorder which can be used to allow users to fast forward through segments of a recorded video signal, such as commercial breaks, while still allowing the advertiser a limited opportunity to present an advertising message. Frames from the commercial recorded with the video signal are electronically tagged. When the processor of the digital video recorder finds a tagged frame or frames during a fast forward operation, the processor may display the tagged frame as a static image during the fast forward operation or may play the series of tagged frames at normal speed as a condensed video clip during the fast forward operation. Thus, through a static image or a condensed video clip, an advertiser can present an advertising message, while the user may still skip the full-length commercials as quickly as before.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,280,737 to Smith, issued Oct. 9, 2007 and entitled “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DISCOURAGING COMMERCIAL SKIPPING”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses an apparatus which is adapted to discourage the use of commercial skipping recorder devices by inserting extraneous signals into a sequential program segment. A commercial skipping device recognizes program segments comprised of sequential program segments, commercial segments, and segment dividers delimiting the program and commercial segments. The incorporation of extraneous signals inserted into the segments will cause the device to identify the program and commercial segments incorrectly, so that, at least in some instances, they do not correspond to the actual program and commercial segments. Now, when the viewer elects to operate the recorder to play the program without the commercials, the recorder will play a sequence of modified segments that are incomplete in that some portions of the program segments are cutoff and/or include at least part of the unwanted commercial segments. As a result, the viewer may become frustrated with the operation of the recorder and will no longer operate the recorder in an automatic commercial skipping mode.
United States Patent Application No. 20020144262 to Plotnick, et al., published Oct. 3, 2002 and entitled “ALTERNATIVE ADVERTISING IN PRERECORDED MEDIA”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a method of presenting viewers with an alternative brief version of a recorded advertisement when they choose to fast-forward through or skip (or any other trick play event) the recorded advertisement. The alternative advertisement may be displayed instead of or in conjunction with the recorded advertisement (i.e., fast-forwarding advertisement is displayed in one portion of the screen (i.e., background or portion of a split screen) and the alternative brief version is displayed in another portion). The alternative brief version of the advertisement (trick play advertisement) may be a marketing message that is a static screen presenting a logo or a portion of the recorded advertisement, or may be a condensed version of the actual advertisement. The trick play advertisements may be targeted. An alternate or entirely unrelated advertisement can also be displayed as the trick play advertisement.
United States Patent Application No. 20020191950 to Wang, Xiaoling, published Dec. 19, 2002 and entitled “APPARATUS AND A METHOD FOR PREVENTING COMMERCIAL SKIPPING”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a system, apparatus, and method which enable or disable all manual and automated skipping functions of a video recording and playback device based on a content classification signal which is associated with a video signal. The content classification signal may be comprised of a plurality of portions each of which indicate whether commercial or non-commercial content is in a particular portion of a video signal. The manual and automated skipping functions may include all functions that allow fast forward with and without video content display, fast forward with different speeds, fast forward with varying speed, one-button skipping functions with at least one preset skipping time or length interval, and smart skipping functions that skip only to a certain end point set automatically or manually. The system and the method according to the invention offers also possibilities to selectively disable or enable the skipping functions based on a set of management parameters such as television channel identification, television program identification, television program class identification, date and time identification, as well as subscription related information.
In United States Patent Application No. 20030037330 to Makofka, published Feb. 20, 2003 and entitled “METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR THE DISPLAY OF ADVERTISING MATERIAL DURING PERSONAL VERSATILE RECORDER TRICK PLAY MODES”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, a display engine is provided which is associated with the one or more memory devices for providing display output. A motion control engine is used to direct the display engine to merge the advertising material with the program material during PVR trick play modes such that the advertising material is displayed, e.g., on a display device. The merging of the advertising material and the program material may be accomplished by alpha blending the advertising material with the program material. By alpha blending the advertising material with the program material, the advertising material can be displayed over the programming material such that the programming material is either not visible or partially visible underneath the advertising material. The merging may be performed such that the advertising material is displayed in a picture-in-picture format. In the alternative, the merging of the advertising material and the program material may result in the advertising material being displayed as one of a banner or a border. The program material may be at least partially visible during said trick play modes.
United States Patent Application No. 20050273828 to Barton, published Dec. 8, 2005 and entitled “METHOD FOR ENHANCING DIGITAL VIDEO RECORDER TELEVISION ADVERTISING VIEWERSHIP”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, provides a method wherein the first or last number of seconds of a commercial break are carefully authored to provide a “teaser” to entice the viewer to watch multiple commercials during the commercial break instead of skipping the commercial break using the fast forward or jump functions of the DVR. A bookending function displays an advertisement before and/or after a program that has been recorded on the DVR's storage device is played to the viewer. The viewer selects a recorded program from the DVR's storage device to playback. Before the program is played back, an advertisement is retrieved from the storage device and is displayed before the program is run. Another advertisement is retrieved and then played after the program is over.
United States Patent Application No. 20060222321 to Russ, published Oct. 5, 2006 and entitled “TRICK PLAY RESISTANT AD INSERTION”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses trick play resistant advertisements. According to the invention, specified commercials could be recognized by the software in set-top boxes to prohibit the use of trick play for the duration of the commercial. The commercials would also be precluded from trick play when played in a multi-room system or when recorded to a DVD.
United States Patent Application No. 20060031892 to Cohen, published Feb. 9, 2006 and entitled “Prevention of advertisement skipping”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, discloses a method for delivering digital media including transmitting a stream of the digital media to be played by a client at a predefined play speed, the stream comprising main content and, in predetermined intervals, differentiated content. In response to a request from the client to pass over a portion of the stream at a speed different from the play speed, the client is permitted to pass over the main content in the portion of the stream at the different speed, but is constrained to play the differentiated content in at least one of the intervals in the portion at the play speed.
United States Patent Application No. 20070150919 to Morishita, published Jun. 28, 2007 and entitled “CONTENT RECEIVING, RECORDING AND REPRODUCING DEVICE AND CONTENT DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM”, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, provides a recording and reproducing device having a CM skip function, which prevents reductions of advertising effects and user-friendliness. In the case where the contents recorded on the recording and reproducing device include a commercial portion, a viewing history flag is assigned to the commercial portion. If the commercial has been reproduced, the viewing history flag relevant to the commercial is set at 1 to control viewing history of each individual commercial portion. In the case where there is a request for reproduction of the contents, it is determined whether or not the commercial yet to be viewed is more than a predetermined amount to secure convenience for the user by imposing no operational limit until reaching the predetermined amount. If the predetermined amount is reached, an operational limit is imposed so as to urge viewing of the commercial.
Despite the foregoing approaches which attempt to frustrate commercial skipping via “trick modes” or other techniques, there is a need for a user-friendly mechanism for viewing content and advertisements which both eliminates the guess-work and imprecision associated with skipping commercials via manual fast-forwarding through recorded content, and presents a viewer with options regarding the type and content of advertisements to view.
Such methods and apparatus would also allow for decoupling of advertising or promotions from a particular previously recorded program, thus affording the network operator flexibility to insert advertising content options, which a viewer may choose between, in a dynamic fashion based on inter alia changing network conditions, and/or cost/benefit decisions. This approach would also permit use of a new more flexible business method (pricing model) for network operators and content sources.
The ability to replace dated or expired advertisements stored remotely would also be highly desirable.
Subscriber anonymity or privacy (i.e., no use of personally identifiable information) would also ideally be maintained where desired.